beta'd by shinobi :] thank you for the encouragement

Why Are You Up

When Mike pulls you toward his computer like an eager child you just smile.

You smile because that’s really all you can do these days. And that’s strange because you’re the most easily agitated, the one who gets annoyed at the tiniest thing, the one who bitches and moans when someone puts a toe out of line. Even when Dave let his dogs shit on your lawn earlier this week you just sighed and kept weeding your flower bed. Even when Rob showed up late for the fifth time in a row to a band meeting, reeking of the salty ocean, you just smiled and sipped your latte. Even when Brad made a crack about Ve’cel and you “doing your little turn on the catwalk” you simply joined in with the laughter from the group.

So you’re smiling now as Mike pulls up a picture slideshow and pulls you closer. It’s hard for you to remain inhibited around him and you don’t even bother to reprimand yourself when you take a seat on his knees. He doesn’t protest, just meets your smile with his own, albeit a little curious, and wraps one arm around your waist to keep you steady, then clicks the mouse and the picture fills up the screen.

“Joe finally sent these over this morning,” he explains and that dumb smile is still on your face as Joe’s face fills the screen as well as a posed ‘thumbs up.’

“Oh, is this why you called me at ten in the morning on our day off and demanded I come over immediately?” You ask, grateful to be getting to the point.

Mike asked you to come over. So you showered, brushed your teeth, and made it to his place in record time despite your body screaming for rest, your stomach crying for food.

Mike is more important than your health, really.

He peers up at you with flushed cheeks, embarrassed that maybe you aren’t as excited as he is about getting the pictures from the latest tour, and falters a moment.

“I’m sorry, I just… well I thought-” He breaks off when you raise a finger to his lips and his hand squeezes your hard stomach.

Your stupid smile reassures him.

“Don’t apologize,” you say and slide an arm around his shoulders before leaning back against him and the desk chair. “Let’s see them, then.”

Mike’s smile returns and he clicks away from the picture of Joe.

Now you’re looking at Brad’s morning face. He’s haggard as all hell, his curly brown hair flying out at weird angles, his expression entirely un amused at Joe waking him with a camera in his face. He looks like a badgered forest animal.

The next few shots are all of you and your band mates caught off guard during your morning routine, including one of Joe scratching his ass in the bunk hall after the rest of you had plotted to get him back for the photo of Dave having nearly fallen asleep while standing up taking a piss, Rob having rolled out of his bunk and onto the floor in a tangle of bed sheets and dirty clothes, and, you gulp at the next photo, you and Mike curled up in each other’s arms in his bunk.

You distinctly remember this morning although you were fast asleep and didn’t know the picture had been taken. You had a habit of crawling into Mike’s bunk when you couldn’t sleep, had a nightmare, a dream, an unsettling thought… or anytime, really.

All the time, actually.

And Mike never objected, just welcomed you with open arms, never asking what was wrong because he knew if you were comfortable talking about it then you would be the first to mention it. The only reason this photo is significant, this morning over all the other mornings you can remember waking up like this, is because it had been blisteringly hot outside and Mike had finally gotten fed up enough to brave sleeping shirtless. It was… fuck, it was amazing to see Mike uninhibited. Sure, he was almost as uncomfortable having himself exposed as he would’ve been if he’d sweat it out in his shirt, but he hadn’t objected to you crawling into his bunk and gasping in surprise when you felt the bare flesh of his chest, when in your haste to cuddle up against him your fingers brushed over his nipples, his ribs, his stomach.

You remember being so startled, so shocked to find him bare-chested, that you couldn’t stop your wandering fingers. They moved of their own accord, one of the first times you’d been unable to help yourself, and explored him without hesitation.

Sitting now on his lap, feeling his fingers clench into your stomach at the sight of the picture, watching out the corner of your eye at his other hand itching to click ahead through the photo, you wonder what he’s thinking.

You can’t take your eyes off the picture but you lift a hand to hover over his before resting atop the minor tremble of his bones, sliding your fingers through his, clutching his hand and pulling it away from the mouse.

You sigh and smile dreamily at the picture.

The pair of you shirtless. Mike’s back to the open curtain. His spine arched, visible through the taut flesh. His arms wrapped in what you’d like to call a possessive manner around your shoulders. You huddled against his chest. Your arms wrapped so tightly around his waist.

Your stomach burns hot at the sight of your flamed forearms clutching his tanned waist.

Definitely possessive. Definitely an image you never want to forget. Something about the reality, the intimate nature of the photo, your arms, the arms that could only be yours holding him to you, you to him, it makes your mouth run dry.

You’re so enamored with the low rise of his black boxers, the elastic waist hugging his hips, the dark, matted mess of his hair going in every which direction against the white pillow case, the way one of his strong, muscled legs is thrown over yours, keeping you his prisoner, that you almost miss the vibration he sends through your every nerve when he clears his throat nervously.

You turn away reluctantly and feel his skin warm beneath your hand as he looks up at you wide-eyed.

Mike parts his lips, wets them nervously and you follow the motion of his tongue like a hawk, and then swallows thickly.

“Say what you want to say Mike,” you murmur with that smile you can’t contain.

You’re very aware of his hot lap beneath your backside, his stomach and chest against your back, your shoulder, his hand still clutching your stomach through your thin t-shirt. You are glad that this photo makes his eyes blacken and his heart thump against his rib cage; you can see that and feel that.

“Chester, I,” he begins shakily and you watch those black eyes turn back to the photo on the screen, widening momentarily as if he suddenly saw something he hadn’t seen before, as though he only now realized just how intimate it was.

How intimate the pair of you are now, and how natural that feels, how easily you came to be sitting in his lap with his arm around you.

“Say it Mike,” you whisper and let your head rest against his, your eyes now trained on the picture, looking with him.

The hand of his that you hold in yours goes to rest on your stomach, clutching like the other, before both of his hands relax and rest flat palmed on your abdomen. You dare a glance at those hands, seeing how large they are, how long and thin his fingers are, how much area of your stomach they cover when they are spread out like now. You wet your lips as your mind wanders briefly, imagining those fingers between your lips, your hands guiding them along your body, directing them to do a number of things that you would like very much but are presently still too inhibited to admit aloud.

You gasp when those hands smooth up your stomach, ride the ripples of your ribs, sweep over the slight muscular swell of your chest before wrapping tightly around you in an affectionate hug, the kind only Mike gives you, a kind that is uniquely his own.

“I haven’t slept well since the tour,” he admits quietly, the sound low and deep and you recognize the tired quality of it sadly, wondering if this is how he’s sounded since you got off tour but you were stuck up on your own little cloud nine, oblivious to his discomfort.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur uncertainly, feeling worried and curious and hopeful all at once. You are good at being pulled in all directions by your conflicting emotions. You turn your head, lips grazing the warm flesh of his ear lobe in the process. “Did I mess up your sleeping schedule?”

Mike turns to meet your gaze, eyes boring into yours with their black pitch, his pupils nearly invisible; it makes your heart race and you bite your lip. You let go, though, when he looks at your mouth.

He nods in reply and you feel upset.

“I’m sorry,” you begin hastily, squirming a bit to turn in his lap, your legs hanging over the edge of the chair, expression grim. “If I had known then I wouldn’t have bothered you… well,” you pause, chewing the inside of your lip. “Alright, I probably still would have come but… but I would’ve-”

Mike silences you with a kiss.

He presses his full lips to your open mouth and the rest just happens because it feels right, like it’s meant to happen, like there is no other way for this conversation to go but here.

Your arms go up around his shoulders, his still firmly wrapped around your chest, and you let your tongue meet his as it slides into your mouth. There is no kiss you can recall that feels remotely like this, that has ever made your insides burn and melt the way they are now. No touch or caress that is similar by any means to the way Mike has always rubbed your back when you’re in his embrace, the way you can feel his long, thin fingers trailing over the back of your ribs, the way he is doing so now.

His kisses before, satisfying however too brief, not enough for your liking but somehow enough to sustain you in waiting for this moment, were nothing compared to the way his tongue massaged yours, trailed along your teeth, flicked inside your mouth like it were familiar territory he was revisiting. How his head tilted slightly, his arms tightened their hold, his hips bucked without restraint, all of it was reason enough for your head to swim, your own embrace to strengthen, your heart to pound all too fast for your health.

When he goes to pull away, to breathe and to give you a chance to catch your breath as well before the pair of you pass out, he gasps because you push your lips back against his. He has nowhere to go so he gives in and you are floored by the moans that escape his lips whenever they part to accommodate your tongue.

You finally do pull away, but not until after he strains his neck forward and demands a few more touches of your lips to his, which you gladly provide.

The pair of you, panting and gasping, chests swelling and falling, arms trembling around one another, well, you are quite a sight. And then there you are on the computer monitor, wrapped around one another in a similar fashion, although looking far more peaceful, less agitated, less hungry.

Your eyes meet at the same time and your impish albeit haggard smile counters his smug look.

“I think I would be able to sleep,” Mike rasps out, breaking the thick silence, cutting through the warm air that hangs around your seated figures, “if you were there…” he trails off with a near whisper and you note his black eyes, the faint purple smudges beneath them, and how exhausted he really does look.

No less beautiful, perhaps even more so because he is consumed by something he cannot control, which excites you in a way, but certainly tired.

You manage to convince yourself to climb off his lap with the mental assurance that it wouldn’t be long before you were in his arms again, but he puts up a fight, eyes incredulous, reluctant, and devastated, his arms refusing to let you go.

Your heart swells in your chest.

“Let’s go to bed then,” you say quietly and make to climb off again.

There’s no hesitation in his movements now that you’ve explained yourself, but he does keep his arms around you while he stands up hastily and nearly drags you off to his room, to his bed where you fall under the covers and into his arms.